Maternally Yours
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: "It's the price we pay, for loving him." (same au as Milk Tooth. Blake/Jean side pairing.)


_/*shrugs endlessly* idk if u remind me this au exists I will write for it. Shoutout to seven-dragons for reminding me this time around. Part of the AU where Charlie's Blake's son. I'd recommend you read Milktooth before reading this, but you don't have too. Lee is so slept on tbh. I_

"Did you hate us?" Charlie takes his eyes off the road for split second to glance at Mei Lin.  
"No." It is interesting in that the entire few months that his step mother has been in town that he has not had much cause to be alone with her. A little sad as well, perhaps. It's also interesting that she doesn't have to explain what she means, just say something out of the blue like that he'd just 'get it'. Perhaps that's just how it is for people who love Lucien Blake. A sort of horrible solidarity.

"I would understand, if you did." Charlie gave a slight smile, mostly to himself.

"Hating you wouldn't change anything." He replied.

"You are your father's child." He wants to insist that he is what his grandfather made him to be, his father's influence was secondary, but he doesn't.

"So is Lee." He replied, "You had as much right to him as I did, more, probably." A long pause that seems to echo in the silence it created. He pulls the car to a halt at a stop sign.

"I did feel bad, when I read the letters you sent. You always asked when he would be coming home." It's funny what the mind remembers. He recalls writing every one of those letters, every photograph, every tiny plea.

"I was a child." He shrugged, setting off again. "Children only want to be with their parents." A thin and bitter smile slides its way across his lips.

"And now I'm the one who wants him to come back to me." Charlie is the one feeling bad. Mei Lin said she is leaving because Blake no longer loves her. He knows the truth. There can't be more then one. For one to stay in Blake's spotlight love, another had to go. And it was her.

"My father's love is highly coveted." He replied, unable to offer her any comfort. "He loves like a spotlight. When he's there, it's like the sun is rising just for you. But fuck. It's cold when he's gone." Mei Lin gives him a tiny, watery laugh.

"That is very true." She sighed, smoothing her hair with one hand, and looking back to him. He bit his bottom lip and worried it for a moment, before changing lanes and tossing her another glance.

"He lives in his own little world, Lucien Blake." He curled his lip into a smile, "He thinks that he can have the best of everything. He thought that bringing an Australian child who has never even heard a lick of Chinese in his life to live in China was the right choice to make." His grim smile hangs on for dear life. His hands tighten on the wheel. "He truly thought he could make a relationship with Jean work while being married to you." He flicked on his blinker. "Someone had to go. Something had to give. And this time, it was you. "He flicked off his blinker. "Next time, it will be me." Mei Lin looks shocked, perhaps at the statement, perhaps at his pessimism.

"He came back for you."  
"He came back because his father died. Me? I was secondary. A pleasant aftermath." Fallout flavoured with sugar and syrup. "He has always chosen other people over me, why would now be different? He chose himself, then he chose war, then he chose you and Lee, now he has chosen Jean." His voice is so frigid it could have frozen peas. "I'm just a bastard son." He informed her, "I belong to all parties, but no party in particular." He thought of Lee, half Chinese half white, so different to him, and yet also the same. Belonging to both halves, but not to either one at the same time. About the niece he will never meet, who had parents who loved her, a living grandmother who would adore her, he feels robbed. He pushes it away into it's little box in his mind. No good wasting time on the past. "When it comes down to it, he will choose Jean. I know he will." Quiet. "She will pretend she is sad to see me go, but secretly, she'll be pleased. Everyone is always pleased to see me go. As if I'm somehow a threat to what he gives them."

"I was scared, when you were little, that one day he would decide to go back for you. We would have died without him." It is a statement as small and sad as Mei Lin herself, dredged up from tar and held, stained and disgusting in the light, for all to see.

"You needn't have. He was never coming back for me." He swallowed a mouthful of stickly saliva. "No one comes back for me."

"He talked about you all the time. He used to get so excited, when you would send pictures. We had them framed, up on our bedside table so he could see you at least once a day."

"My wallet is in the center console. Open it." Mei Lin does, and then smiles.

"You kept it?"

"On me. All the time." The family that was his but also not his. Lee and Mei Lin and Blake, their little family of three. "For twenty years."  
"Why?"  
"I was such a lonely child." He replied. "I was never enough for my mother. It was...Very comforting, for me, to know that there was a family that I might have been good enough for." Pause. "I always thought that I would please you. Be good enough. We would do those things that children do with their mothers, like baking and sewing." He smiled to himself.

"So you never had any mother at all?"  
"Not really. I was mostly raised by my grandfather, God rest his soul." Even then, he only took Charlie in because he thought that was what his dead wife would have wanted, rather then any actual desire to care for Charlie, at least, at first. It had been different at the end.

Moments pass in silence. Seemingly they have exhausted their conversation library.

"Could I ask a favour of you?" Mei Lin raised one eyebrow, he takes this as an opportunity to voice his ask. "Could you give a letter to Lee, for me, when you see her?"

"Why?"  
"She's my little sister, I have some right to know her, I think." More defensive then he meant for it to be.

"It's odd to think of it like that. You were seven when she was born."  
"Mmm."

"I will."

"It's written in English. I uh. I can't write Chinese." She find that amusing. Pause.  
"I actually have a question, for you."  
"Yes?"  
"Say that, hypothetically, I had come over to Singapore, to live with you, would I have been welcome. Please, answer honestly. Don't tell me what you think I'd like to hear." Mei Lin at least takes the time to think of it while Charlie changes lanes and turns left.

"I don't know." She admitted. "I don't think I would have had a choice in the matter. Lucien would have made you welcome. Made you fit. He was good like that." And yet he kept you in a hotel. He doesn't voice it. "He loves you."  
"I know he does. I think that's the worst bit." Charlie said, and bit his lower lip. "We all pay a price, to love him."

"I know." There is something kind in the silence. He is not used to it.

When the ship is leaving, she kisses his cheek.

"You're a good man, Charlie Davis-Blake."

"Thank you, Mrs Blake." A pause. She turns to look at him.

"You would have been enough. You are always enough." She leaves.

Both of them know she isn't coming back.

…

Dear Lee.

To me, you exsist in a strange space between tangibility and intangibility. Ever since I was seven, I have known that I had a sister. A girl, and then a woman, who had half of the same genes that I did. I have always told people I had a sister. And yet, it has also always seemed that you were just out of my reach, something that I could never hold or talk with. Perhaps that is why I am sending you this letter. Perhaps I want proof you are real.

I have never written to you before now, and I am not expecting any reply from you, I just wanted to tell you that I think of you often, I suppose. I don't know why I started writing this letter given I have no idea what to fill it with, but I'll try my best.

Do you think of me of your brother? Do you think of me at all? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, I am just curious. Do you think of our father still? He thinks of you quite often. He sometimes writes eight to ten drafts of a letter before sending it to you. I wonder why everything I do comes back to him. I would like to live my own life, separate just once in my life.

And yet, I don't know who I am without him. Without that title of Lucien's son, who am I? If I ever found out, would I like him? I wonder, do you ever think things like this? I suppose you musn't, I understand your life isn't anchored to his the way that mine is.

I end this letter by sending you as much love as I am capable of sending someone. Even if you never write back, or if you hate me, I will always be here, should you ever want to. (I've included a photo of myself, since I have one of you. )

Love.

Charlie Davis-Blake.

…

Dear Charlie.

When I received your letter from my mother, a million ways that the letter could begin ran through my mind, and I waited four days before reading it. It took me a further six to start writing this. I would like to start by assuring you that I am in fact very real. As proof, I am including a photo of myself, my daughter and my husband.

Please assure our father that my mother has arrived safe and sound. She has told me about what happened in Australia. I have wondered often about what she told me, about not only our father ( I expected all of that) but of you. She described you as sweet, but awkward, roughly. I think that the correct English word is Melancholy.

I started and put down this letter many times now, I am not sure where to go from here. I will be honest with you.

I do think of you as my brother, even if we have never met. I don't tend to tell people I have a brother, I am frowned upon enough as it is. Like you are his bastard, I am half of his race, and half of my mothers. We both carry a piece of him with us always. But we both also carry our own experiences and moments in our lives that have shaped us into the people we have become.

I did not think of myself as Lucien's daughter for many years. I was so sure that he had simply taken off, gone away, left me behind after the war. I am just now made aware that you thought the same thing. Perhaps we are simply cursed as his children. Our father is a strange man at the best of times.

It's odd, referring to him as our father, after so long of him simply being 'my father' or 'father.' Upon studying your pictures I can spot similarities between our faces. I do take more after my mother, and you take after our father, but I think that our eyes are the same. Not in the sense that they are the same colour. Mine are brown and yours are, as far as I know, blue. But we have the same look to them. That sadness. My mother insists that is so.

With the end of this letter drawing close I would like to tell you that I appreciate it. I believe that we will meet some day, if we are lucky.

Love.

Lee Blake. (This is not the name I use. This is for your benefit.)

…

Holding the letter and re reading it for the millionth time, Charlie smiled to himself, before tucking it away in his drawer with all his father's letters and war postcards. He feels strangely high, for once, elated to have finally made contact with his sister, and not only that, but Blake still doesn't know. Charlie thinks about telling him, then decides not to, to keep something precious for himself.


End file.
